Enough airport

A tip of the hat to Saratoga County government, or at least to the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the Board of Supervisors, which yesterday (DATE), voted down and thereby laid to rest a proposal to expand the county airport even further into surrounding residential neighborhoods, mowing down yet more trees and disrupting yet more lives. And a tip of the hat to the neighbors who rallied to put a stop to the proposed vandalism, which came disguised as economic development, aviation safety and finally and most alarmingly as bureaucratic necessity, something compelled by the Federal Aviation Administration, no less.

Not on your life, said residents, unanimously, as they packed a meeting room in the county complex, some 150-strong, and the committee acceded, in contrast to four years ago when the same county government authorized and carried out the clear-cutting of 25 acres of trees, leaving many homes that had previously been shaded and sequestered now high and dry. Cost of that vandalism: $790,000. Not to mention an earlier onslaught that turned 60 acres of woods into something resembling a Mongolian steppe. This is southwest of Saratoga Springs, in the rural but fast-suburbanizing town of Milton, where woods are rapidly being replaced by car washes, instant housing complexes with pretentious names, discount tire emporiums, and drive-through banks, all with asphalted parking lots. And it is for the sake of a rinky-dink little airport that serves private planes exclusively, mostly of the weekend recreational variety – ATVs with wings, you might say – and not commercial flights, though its private operators are at pains to remind us of the highly important Lear jets that land and take off in the summer, presumably hauling loads of manna without which Saratoga would wither and die.

I confess I am not a disinterested observer of this situation, residing just a couple of miles from the airport and therefore counting myself among the neighbors who are affected, at least indirectly, by dint of having to observe the stripped land and, farther back, the trees that have been lopped off halfway up, to satisfy the requirements of safety engineers in Washington.

Never mind the air-cleaning effect of acres of trees removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Never mind the beauty and restfulness of a stand of pines behind a suburban house. Never mind the shade, never mind the birds, never mind the chipmunks. If some weekend pilot clips a treetop, as one did five years ago, the answer is not to tell the weekend pilot to be more careful next time. The answer is to turn 85 acres of forest into a wasteland and leave homeowners with empty and stripped backyards, for which they are compensated a couple thousand dollars each. Well, this time government got the message, and I’m grateful, though it’s not over. The vote was simply on a proposed update to the airport’s “master plan,” which is required every 10 years by the aforementioned FAA. The FAA, as I understand it, can still require the cutting down of more trees, master plan or not and runway extensions or not, and in another 10 years the plan will have to be revisited, and we’ll go through the same thing again. At some point the people of Saratoga County, and especially the people in the neighborhood of the airport, around Rowland Street and Geyser Road, will have to decide whether it’s worth it to have this inconsequential airport at all, with its outsized footprint.

And how do you suppose someone is going to die without more acres of woods being leveled and more homes left barren? By some weekend hobby-flier clipping a treetop half a mile away? How about letting him be a little more careful, or even keep his butt on the ground?

Also, the airport was built in August, 1943, so unless you owned a house then, the location of the airport should not have been a surprise.

“How about letting him be a little more careful, or even keep his butt on the ground?”

Sure, things like mechanical breakdowns, birds or weather never affect the landing phase of a flight; why not add some trees to the mix. I don’t have a (printable) response to the arrogance of your “butt on the ground” comment.

I don’t understand how you can value weekend recreational aviation by 50-some hobbyists (the number of planes based at the airport) over the quality of life of the hundreds of people who live in the immediate vicinity of the airport and face ongoing clear-cutting of their land, regardless of when the airport was built. Sure, the location of the airport was not a surprise to people who bought or built homes nearby, but the relentless expansion of the zone of influence is very much a surprise.

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